1. Field of the Invention
The invention lies in the field of electronic input devices. The invention relates to a method of pre-caching user interaction elements based on input device position.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been many recent advances in personal, hand-held computer technology, typically referred to as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), Palm PCs, or Pocket PCs.
Recently, various types of hand held electronic devices for personal data organization have been successfully marketed. One such type of device is a PDA sold under the trademarks PALMPILOT, PALM III, PALM IV, AND PALM V, available from Palm Computing of Mountain View, Calif. a 3COM company. These PDAs include control buttons and a touch-sensitive screen with touch-sensitive screen activation areas displayed thereon. PDAs typically display phone numbers, to-do lists, calendars, digitally stored maps, directions, etc., all of which are accessible through touching the activation areas and/or control buttons.
A separate hand-held pen or stylus is included to activate the touch-sensitive screen activation areas. The touch-sensitive screen activation areas can include data entry portals. To enter data into the PALMPILOT, one either uses an on-screen keyboard or an on-screen GRAFFITI-based writing xe2x80x9cpadxe2x80x9d that responds to a form of shorthand. Both of these data entry devices require implementation of the stylus. The on-screen keyboard enables the user to input alphanumeric characters, for example. Corresponding software enables the pad to recognize/read the handwritten gestures made while the stylus lies upon and/or travels over the tablet and either interprets the gestures as a command for executing a given function or translates the gestures into a digital representation.
Force-based stylus systems inherently rely upon contact between the stylus and the writing surface. Thus, typical force-based systems are unable to receive stylus data when the stylus is not contacting the writing surface. Additionally, force-based systems inherently do not provide a measurement of stylus speed across the writing surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,589 to Meeks et al. discloses a system for displaying handwriting parameters in which the pen speed is used to modulate an envelope around the trace on the display. The system allows a side by side comparison of a stored reference signature and a newly penned signature for verification purposes. In other conventional pen-speed based dynamic signature analysis systems, an analog signal proportional to the tangential pen speed across a surface is generated. The system correlates the signal to a reference signal and reports the degree of correlation. Another system provides automatic verification based on use of a pen having an accelerometer and a pressure sensor, in which the pen acceleration and pressure are used internally as the discriminants. Another system determines the X and Y components of pen speed and uses the magnitude of the differences in the velocity vectors as an internal discriminant.
A first drawback to the touch-sensitive systems is that the stylus-based action is dependent solely upon direct contact between the stylus and the touch-sensitive screen. In other words, when the stylus is not in contact with the touch-sensitive screen, computer activity based upon stylus use or position is not altered, carried out, or executed, and stylus position information is neither conveyed to the touch-sensitive screen nor used by the internal computing device.
The touch-sensitive screen activation areas can also include on-screen controls that are defined by particular defined areas that, when touched, implement predetermined changes or functionality in computer activity. Examples of controls that are defined by areas of the touch-sensitive screen include icons representing software functionality and pull-down menus. These areas can be bit-mapped, for example. Such menus include, for example, word processing functions in a word processor, i.e., xe2x80x9cFile,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cEdit,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cView,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cInsert,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cFormat,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cTools,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cTable,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cWindow,xe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cHelp.xe2x80x9d Presently, enabling a touch-sensitive screen activation area can be performed only by actually touching the screen with the stylus directly above a particular control area.
Accordingly, a second drawback in existing touch-sensitive systems lies in the fact that the computer begins to implement the functionality of the control areas or preliminary actions that are necessary to execute the functionality only when and after the stylus has actually touched the screen directly above a particular control area. Implementation of the functionality or the preliminary actions does not occur before such contact.
Enabling software functionality by loading in or caching a particular software program takes time. For example, a software program, such as a word processor, a calendar, or an address list, takes time to fully load into the computer""s memory after the instruction is given to activate that program (i.e., touch for PDAs and double-click for desktop/laptop computers).
Therefore, a third drawback to the existing touch-sensitive systems is evidenced by an implementation delay of the control area functionality, the implementation not taking place until after the stylus actually touches the particular position defining the control area.
While none of the existing touch-sensitive, stylus/tablet, hand-held computer systems employ a stylus and tablet that are independent from direct contact between the stylus and the tablet, various electronic stylus-based systems do exist that can employ this feature. Two systems that presently define the state of the art for technology that is partially independent from the direct contact between a stylus and a tablet include inductive coupling and radio frequency systems.
One inductive coupling pen-sensing system is produced by Synaptics, Inc. That inductive system operates by using a modulated inductive coupling between a fixed and a moving point to enable precise measurement of a relative position between the two points. Specifically, the system measures the relative position of the tip of a pen relative to a pen-based computer. A printed circuit board of the system contains tracks that are used as a fixed sensing coil. A fixed excitation coil is positioned between the printed circuit board and a liquid crystal display (LCD). A passive pen containing a capacitor and a coil is used for xe2x80x9cwritingxe2x80x9d upon the LCD. This system can track and record the movement of the pen upon the LCD. Significantly, the device is able to sense the location of the pen at a distance from the surface of the LCD. For conventional power outputs, the system can track the pen at a distance of up to approximately one-half (0.5) inch from the LCD surface.
An example embodiment of a radio frequency (xe2x80x9cRFxe2x80x9d) pen-sensing system is produced by the CROSS pen computing group and is referred to as the CROSSPAD device. The pen in this system contains a small RF transmitter that sends pen stroke data to the notepad. Because the transmitter sends radio signals, this system can track and record the movement of the pen at a distance from the surface of the display.
Consumers judge and differentiate electronic products based on response speed, seamless navigation, and Graphical User Interface (GUI) ease-of-use. GUIs with menus, hypertext, and graphical selection features are becoming more common, and the GUI screen density of these features in electronic devices is increasing rapidly to accommodate increasing functionality. This situation is particularly acute for wireless devices that tend to be small in size and that have small, low-resolution displays.
Prior art user-assist technologies (such as xe2x80x9cTool Tipsxe2x80x9d in WINDOWS and highlighting/roll-over when a cursor passes over a hyperlink) use two-dimensional information (i.e., the X-Y position on a screen). These user-assist technologies can be referred to as anticipation alerts. The systems employing the technology, however, have many limitations.
One of these limitations is inadvertent activation. A user typically moves on and along the screen plane when moving between different locations on the screen. A screen typically contains many different control areas, hot spots, or hyperlinks. Thus, when only two-dimensional technology is used to traverse the screen, the user moves over many control areas. In such a case, the user does not want to enable the control areas that are being passed over; the user only wants to enable the target control area. But, because the intermediate areas appear directly in the path of the desired control area, there is a high probability of inadvertent activation of the intermediate control area as the cursor traverses over that hyperlink or hot spot. Such inadvertent activation is referred to as a false alert.
A second limitation is access time. Because of the reduction and elimination of many conflicts between general motion within a particular screen on the tablet and the control area interaction, two-dimensional systems take more time to trigger the anticipation alert (as compared with three-dimensional stylus tracking systems).
A third limitation is recorder tracking. Actual motion in two-dimensional devices is tracked only when the stylus is in contact with the tablet, i.e., the active input area. The third-dimensional movement is not tracked.
The prior art, therefore, indicates a need for making PDA operation faster and more convenient. Further, a more convenient method of and device for precisely touching selected activation areas on a PDA touch-sensitive screen is needed.
The invention provides a method and a device for pre-caching user interaction elements using input device position that overcomes the above-mentioned disadvantages of the heretofore-known methods and devices of this general type and that, for many different hand-held electronic input systems, frees the touch-based screen control system from being solely dependent upon direct contact between the stylus and the touch-sensitive screen, implements the preliminary actions that are necessary to execute the function assigned to an identified control area before the stylus has actually touched the screen at that particular control area, and reduces the waiting time for activating a given software functionality.
In other words, before the stylus is contact with the screen, computer activity based upon stylus use or position can be altered, carried out, or executed, and stylus position information can be conveyed to and used by the internal computing device.
The invention provides a pre-caching system that anticipates the likely interaction of the user with the system based upon a three-dimensional location and motion of the pointing device, i.e., the stylus. Specifically, the invention captures the non-contact movements of the stylus during use. As used herein, the term pre-caching is defined as those preliminary actions that are necessary to execute the function that is assigned to an identified control area.
Also, the terms gesture or motion patterns are defined as any three-dimensional movement of a user""s hand. The gesture can be a movement, a handwritten symbol, or it can be the user""s signature. Pen or stylus as used herein can refer to any object held by a user for sending information that electronically and/or digitally captures a user""s hand movement. Similarly, tablet, pad, or like terms refer to any surface, tangible or intangible, defined with respect to the pen for measuring gestures traced by the pen in a hand of a user.
To provide the above-described advantages, the method and device of the invention not only use pen-down information, they also use pen-up information. Pen-down information includes information collected by the electronic pen/tablet system when the pen actually contacts the defined writing surface, i.e., the surface of a tablet. In contrast, pen-up information is defined as information collected by the electronic pen/tablet system when the pen is away from the defined writing surface. Pen-up information is also referred to as hidden data.
Other features that are considered as characteristic for the invention are set forth in the appended claims.
Although the invention is illustrated and described herein as embodied in a method of pre-caching user interaction elements using input device position, it is nevertheless not intended to be limited to the details shown because various modifications and structural changes may be made therein without departing from the spirit of the invention and within the scope and range of equivalents of the claims.
The construction and method of operation of the invention, however, together with additional objects and advantages thereof will be best understood from the following description of specific embodiments when read in connection with the accompanying drawings.